Heartache to Heartache We Stand.

I’m ready. Bring it.

Chapter 7: A Rose’s Other Name

She carefully unwound the rosary beads that were still locked protectively around her fingers and returned them to the little box on the floor, feeling around in the dull light for the lid to secure them there.  The morning was quiet still, and she liked to try to prolong the feeling of calm that lived in these early hours.  She pulled a t-shirt over her camisole and shorts and headed for the door, sliding a clove from the pack on the dresser and the lighter beside it.  The steam from the shower licked across her cheek as she quietly opened and shut the door, stepping out onto the first floor porch, and she leaned against the railing. In a casual and thoughtless motion she lit up and took a deep drag, feeling the sweet smoke flood down her lungs, numbing, for a moment, the burned-in image of grey fur and glistening yellow eyes. She hadn’t taken up smoking until after college, long after the stereotypes could have labeled her a statistic.  In her loneliest times, she felt a quiet satisfaction in the shared community of smokers.  All at once they felt guilty and proud, angry and contrite- a secret society of those who knew they were, with each breath, peeling years off of their lives. But she was no stranger to self-destruction, especially the agonizingly slow decline of bad habits.

Her neighborhood was coming to life all around her, and she liked to hear the starting cars, the screaming babies, and the barking dogs.  The smoke eased the usual panic that she felt at the prospect of facing another day when every person around her was a potential threat she had to measure.  She often felt like she was stepping into a pool of black water, forcing herself to go forward but full of terror at the idea of what was hiding below the surface, ready to pull her back down under the water of days when all she could do was lay on the bathroom floor and cry.  Those days were mostly past her now, but she remembered the struggle of putting on clothes and moving mechanically through her job when everything she touched flayed her like the Little Mermaid on freshly dissected legs. Coming out of that time had almost destroyed her completely, but she had made it and she was stronger for it, determined to find a meaning in the time of struggle.

She took another drag and snuffed out the clove butt, flicking it carelessly into the little ashtray she’d constructed of tin foil and walked back towards the door, stretching a sore arm against the railing and yawning deeply.  When she crossed the threshold she felt the warm wet blast of an open bathroom door and walked to it reflexively, pulling off her t-shirt and grabbing the towel that hung from a peg shaped like a unicorn’s horn.  Sidling past her roomate she flung the towel over the side of the shower and slid her camisole over her head as she stepped into the shower.  She slid her shorts off and tossed them over the shower curtain as she turned on the water, still unable to succumb to morning chit-chat as he carefully lathered his face for a shave, tan towel wrapped around his waist, golden hair dripping wet.  She leaned forward and pushed her face into the cool flow of water.  She hadn’t taken a hot shower for years, preferring to feel the chill, like most things in her life. The slight discomforts reaffirmed her grip on reality, and she welcomed the moments when she knew she could say with certainty that she was moving forward and not spinning her wheels.

As she carefully shampooed her long curls, she heard him start to sing a silly tune from a CD they often listened to in the car.  The ridiculous pop song described a teenage romance through an analogy of different colored roses for different life moments and was sung by a trio of teenaged boys with emo hair and skater gear.  They both hated the song but couldn’t help but bring it up several times a day, declaring it an “ear worm” and collapsing into laughter.  By the time she shut the shower off, she heard him singing in the other room.  She stepped out and wrapped herself in the towel, reaching for a comb to pull through the pile of quickly curling tendrils, and looked up to see a heart traced in the fog on the mirror.   The smile on her lips ignited a warmth in her that even a cold shower could not kill. He knew the mornings were hard for her.